About That 9/11 Docu-Drama…
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Media, The Politics Of Film, The War On TerrorismI was going to write something, but Q and O did it for me in a post called “Fake but Accurate Isn’t Good Enough:
Look, there’s no way to sugar-coat the Clinton Administrations handling of terror in general, and Osama bin Laden in particular. In the case mentioned above, the culprit was apparently George Tenet, not Sandy Berger, so the end result was the same, even if the specifics were different. Let’s call that fake, but accurate.“Fake, but accurate”, however, is not a high enough standard. Obviously, some dramatic license is necessary for storytelling purposes. But a film that purports to be a docu-dramaâ€â€?especially about such an important eventâ€â€?and that purports to tell the story of that event, has to make a clear distinction between forgivable artistic license and factual inaccuracy. In at least this scene, which is the one that’s primarily causing the uproar, that distinction was blurred.
And blurred unnecessarily. A succession of administrations, both Democratic and Republican, failed. And those failures were egregious enough that I would think the truth would be damning enough, without resorting to blatant inaccuracy.
If this was just marketed as a movie, based on historical events, that would be one thing. But ABC has printed up and distributed educational materials, for use in classrooms, to accompany the docu-drama. ABC is, in effect, saying this is the true story, when in fact, it is, at least in this case, factually incorrect.
Yep, that about sums it up.
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September 7th, 2006 at 6:17 pm
I think it’s highly irresponsible to play with facts in a documentary. Or a docu-drama. I even think it’s irresponsible in a Hollywood movie, for crying out loud. A Beautiful Mind was a great movie, for instance, but it bears remarkably little resemblance to John Nash’s actual life. I personally wish they had changed the character’s name.
Truth, with or without a capital T, shouldn’t be messed with. You can argue for the compression of characters perhaps, but then the resulting amalgam should not bear the name of a real person.
And there is no excuse whatsoever for false attributions in an educational piece.
September 7th, 2006 at 6:22 pm
To view a tongue-in-cheek visual of the Bush administration’s “A Guide to the ABC’s For Dummies”…link here:
http://www.thoughttheater.com
September 8th, 2006 at 12:13 pm
I don’t remember any outcry from the dem’s over Fahrenhiet 9/11.
Kinda funny how it’s the left that’s always so concerned about freedom of speech, until it’s something they don’t want to hear.
September 8th, 2006 at 12:48 pm
Idjut,
Fahrenheit 9/11 was not presented to be a factual documentary with accompanying books for classrooms. It was a documentary, but a different style of documentary, and no one thought Michael Moore was going for true historical accuracy.
This is ABC, purporting to present a historical drama. The thing about the classroom books I did not know about. That takes this one step further. Another reason you should all turn off your televisions!
September 8th, 2006 at 12:51 pm
Sorry, but Franks is off base here. “Fake, etc.” is not a good enough standard for journalism or history or science. It is a totally meaningless standard when applied to fiction.
Take, for example, Gore Vidal’s fine novels Lincoln and Burr. You can learn a lot of sound history from these books, but much of what is in them - especially the conversations and the who-said-what - is totally contrived. That’s because it’s fiction, and the reader is expected to understand that.
As for showing this series in schools, if ABC doesn’t cancel it and burn all the tapes, it absolutely will be shown in schools. Almost everything of this type is, in some school or another. Regardless of its merits or demerits, this series will probably be kept out of a lot of schools because principals, school boards, or parents will object to it for political reasons. Others will allow it, just as they might allow Fahrenheit 9/11 or The Da Vinci Code to be shown to students. It will be up to the teacher to apply appropriate disclaimers. Some will, some won’t.
No one has seen this thing yet, and so far we have the objections of Sandy Berger and Madelaine Albright. Sandy Berger stole documents on this very subject from the National Archives, so perhaps that makes him a sort of expert. It certainly makes him an expert on what he can get away with claiming, without being contradicted by documentary evidence. You have to be a true believer to take people like Berger at their word.
As for Albright, someone warned Pakistan about the Afghanistan strike, according to the 9/11 Commission. The film makes it out to be Albright, but she says it wasn’t her. So what? If the Clinton adminstration veterans would fess up about what happened, we would know who did it, assuming it’s even important. Since they haven’t and never will, the writer of fiction who dramatizes this event must choose a culprit, and this writer chose Albright. (She should feel honored that they didn’t just leave her out of the film.) To say that the film is therefore fake or full of lies is, as I pointed out above, meaningless.
September 8th, 2006 at 12:58 pm
But of course you are aware, if you have noticed several recent controversies, that this film has been shown in many schools. Michael Moore has a TEACHER’S GUIDE for it on his website, which you can download in PDF format. Put on your hazard gear and go look for yourself.
Anybody have a problem with this? I don’t. It’s a free country.
September 8th, 2006 at 1:37 pm
BTW - to elaborate on my first comment: I’m not saying that people who write historical drama have no responsibility to the truth. They have an entirely different responsibility than journalists and “straight” historians do. In some ways historical fiction demands an even higher standard of respect for truth, because the writer sets out to play with facts from the start and must do so with great caution.
Gore Vidal (whom I find to be totally insane in almost every context) does a fine job of this in many of his novels, especially Lincoln. The proof is in the pudding, and the reader (or viewer) must judge whether the writer is bringing things to life or merely inventing them. There is good historical fiction, bad historical fiction, and my historical fiction.
Unfortunately, you might not get the chance to make this judgment, because it sounds like ABC will bow to criticism and censor the film. The good news is that it will only take 15 minutes to watch it.
September 12th, 2006 at 3:36 pm
I did not go see Fahrenheit 911 because it was not factual.
I did not watch the CBC doco-thingy “Path to 9/11″ because it was “representational”. BTW local reviews seem to indicate that I did not waste my time watching the other rubbish over those two evenings.
I don’t think I would want to watch a true documentary, the plain unvarnished as it happened truth because it would be just too plain depressing…
September 12th, 2006 at 4:26 pm
Hell, I do. Let’s get that information out there. More fact and less opinion.